Training School "Understanding Participation", Malmoe 2012

Why do people take part in urban agriculture? / What benefits do they perceive? / What motivates urban gardeners?

The goal of the training school is to give the participants a better understanding of UA from the participating gardeners' perspective. Policies for UA must no doubt take the participants' perspective as a starting point. To work with, not against, the participants' interests is probably a success factor.

Malmoe has a great variety of urban agriculture initiative, top-down initiatives as well as bottom-up. It has also a variety of examples of sustainable urban development initiatives. The city was one of the few invited cities to the exhibition of sustainable urban development at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. From the city' point of view UA is one of several paths that lead to sustainable urban development. Some of the urban gardeners might agree upon that, but others have more specific motives. There is not just one type of urban gardener. Why do people take part in urban agriculture? What benefits do they perceive? What motivates urban gardeners? These are the questions that the training school is going to deal with.

Each participant is expected to write a short paper on a case they have knowledge of. The paper shall deal with at least one of the questions above. The papers shall be sent in beforehand and be presented and discussed at a paper session the last day. After the training school each participant is expected to write a short paper either comparing the papers that has been presented or expanding their own papers with the theories and empirical observations they have done during the training school.

Tim Delshammar, local organiser

preliminary programme of the Training School